Friday, September 16, 2011

More Change



It's a chilly 45 degrees in southwest Ohio this morning. Nothing like the freezing temperatures some of you readers have depending where you live.

We are thinking about all the green crops left after a late planting season and now we are half way through September. What in the world are farmers going to do with all this wet corn?

A small elevator is for sale a few miles east of me. It can be bought for $65,000 but we had the local grain bin company look at it and it needs $8000 worth of dryer repairs to get the 500 bu dryer up and running to make the 70,000 bu elevator work.

We have 1500 acres of corn here to run through the combines and store and deliver. I can't see it being much below 20% water when we start and it may not get that much below 20. That's a an awful lot of wet corn to deal with not even considering the beans. We can handle all the wet beans with air drying and storage but a dryer would help on problem fields and late, unpredictable weather.

Propane is $2 a gallon for drying but that looks cheap compared to 40 cents plus shrink at local elevators and we only have 3, two are smaller and every farmer is going to want them all.

I have been reading about the surprises in farmers fields in the midwest from 200 bu corn to much below 100. The thing is we have good corn if we can get it dried down and managed.

The pictures shows First Choice 3995 LL soybeans planted in early may versus early June. Most everything around here is more like the second picture or even greener.

There is a lot to think about on the farm today just from year to year seasonal change. It is upon us.

I imagine Farm Science Review will be PACKED next week as no one can work on anything except harvest equipment and bins before the big rush this fall.

Change and more change, it's an every day event.

Ed

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